Changes for California public restrooms

A new law on public bathrooms takes affect in less than a week in California. Starting March 1st, all single use bathrooms must become gender neutral.

The new law means by the end of the month, men or women’s single use restrooms in the state will be illegal.

Gender-neutral restrooms already exist inside the library at Cal State Monterey Bay and are in seven other places on campus.

For some students it’s not only the norm, it’s also something they stand for.

“I think it’s very important, I think that we should be sensitive to all gender identities” said student Tori Johnson. “It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a male, female any kind of pronoun that you want to identify with I think that we should be respectful of and we should all use the same bathroom.”

It’s something the local college brought onto campus more than 5 years ago, long before this new law was proposed just last September.

“It just made common sense to folks that we could provide for accommodations for everybody” said James Tinney, a CSUMB official “I think on a college campus you generally will find people more comfortable with that sort of setting than it might be in some other settings.”

Off-campus though, many were in favor of single-use gender neutral restrooms.

“It doesn’t matter to me what restroom you’ve used I’ve used the men’s room in the single use stalls when the ladies has been too full or there’s a line” said Stacy Howard, a Marina resident.

Back at CSUMB, we did find one student that isn’t a huge fan of gender-neutral restrooms. His reasoning though boils down to convenience.

“It takes so much longer now to use the bathroom because girls take forever in the bathrooms” said student Fady Ellaham. “Because they don’t just use the bathroom it seems like girls are in there like talking taking pictures and snapchatting.”

This law applies to businesses, places of public accommodation and state or local government agencies.

Local health officers or inspectors will be authorized to check those places for compliance.